Today’s readings: Wisdom 1, 13-15; 2, 23-24; 2 Cor. 8, 7.9.13-15; Mk 5, 21-43.
Affirmations from the Book of Wisdom today that “God created everything so that it might continue to exist, and everything he created is wholesome and good”, coupled with the gospel narrative, sound diametrically opposed to common religious perception on bodily wholeness and spiritual well-being. Jesus walks through the streets of Palestine not preparing people to die, but restoring back life and health.
What is of utmost importance in today’s readings is the change we all need to undertake in our lives as believers from a faith that is merely argued, to a faith that saves and restores wholeness both on the personal as well as on the social level.
The challenge of death – moral, spiritual, and physical – is too provoking in our times on the religious level and it demands clear and healthy attitudes towards life.
Mark’s gospel speaks of this wholeness on the social and personal level in the story of a synagogue leader and a social outcast which is highly significant for its spiritual and political implications. Mark’s Jesus is subverting the status quo and creating a new social order.
Jairus, one of the synagogue officials, is mentioned by name because he was someone and his status and entitlement had to be defended. The woman who suffered from a haemorrhage was simply no one, a woman with no status or identity. She had no name. She symbolises the shame of a person’s sensitivity about what others might think and say of her.
Jesus is portrayed as breaking the rules of conduct, shocking those who watched on in this unfolding narrative. What is remarkable in all this is that on his way to heed to the petition of a member of the Jewish ruling class, Jesus is interrupted by this woman and attends to her needs irrespective of the fact that that meant being late to save Jairus’ daughter. It suffices here to remember that according to Levitical purity code, this woman should have been perpetually segregated. What Jesus did is a concrete symbol of empowerment when this nameless and outcast woman becomes the ‘daughter’ at the centre of the story.
Mark juxtaposes the two extremes of the Jewish social scale. The little girl was 12 years old and represents the social order of the ruling class of Judaism. The status-less woman had suffered also for 12 years and she still took initiative in her struggle for liberation. Mark seems to suggest that if Judaism wishes to be saved, it must embrace the faith of the kingdom.
The way Mark brings these stories together irrespective of status or honour, makes of his gospel a handbook for ministers. As ministers in the midst of what Henri Nouwen called “a dislocated world”, we are called in the first place to recognise the sufferings of our time in our own heart and make that recognition the starting point of our service which will not be perceived as authentic unless it comes from a heart wounded by the suffering about which we speak.
People’s questions about faith cannot be answered by prepackaged answers. People’s concerns are many a time existential, not intellectual. That is the reason why very often the truths of faith as we dish them out to people sound abstract and alien to their suffering. That explains also how from primitive times to our day, the depth and extent of human suffering has always been a good motive to make the idea of a loving creator seem implausible.
This is the perennial question the reading from Wisdom today poses. But Mark’s Jesus is then portrayed primarily as healer, as he who attends to our predicaments both social and personal.
As believers we are all called to minister to the world around us. But what makes our ministry relevant and meaningful is the extent to which there is coherence between what we say and what we do, and the extent to which we alleviate the pains, sorrows and sufferings of the human heart and body.